In the highest comp regions (where new revenue generating projects almost always get staffed) it’s a common ballpark estimate of the allin cost of a SWE including all benefits, office, hiring, infra costs, ancillary roles. Consider that a senior SWE alone is pulling about $400k in direct comp. Also consider Google’s total spending per employee (not even just SWE) is about $1mm and many of those are not engineers or in high comp regions. Of course a new org with no big sales/marketing/compute costs will have different cost structure vs search ads but it really is a workable ballpark.